DISCLAIMER: I do not and will not ever own any part of the Harry Potter franchise. I make not profit from this, it's just for fun. Any recognisable characters/places etc. belong to their respective owners.
A.N: Once again I'm really sorry for the wait! I was camping without internet access for 5 days and then GCSE results (6 As and 6 A*s!) and then my best friend lost her Grandmother in the past few days, so… it's been busy.
Anyway, anonyxxx asked a question regarding the rules of the soulmate process, so I thought that to avoid any further confusion I'd outline the basics for you here. Okay, so in my version of the soulamte AU, everyone has a timer – Muggles and magical people alike, and nobody knows how it started or how it works; all they know is that it counts down to when you meet your soulmate. ((However pairings are almost always between two magical people or two Muggles – too messy otherwise)). The timer is present from birth, but is blank until your 21st birthday. On your 21st birthday, the timer will start counting down from a number which appears on the clock, and the length of time can be anywhere from a few hours or even minutes, to decades. However, and this is what the reviewer was asking about, the purpose of the timer is not to force people together. In my version, there is no obligation or contract or magical bond of any kind once you have met your soulmate. The timer's purpose is to show you who your soulmate is, but you have a choice as to whether or not you actually take action.
Also, regarding the guest reviewer who talked about Narcissa – if you happen to read this then thank you for your comments and advice, and as for Narcissa's seemingly pleasant nature towards Muggleborns (i.e. Hermione), there is a reason – bear with me!
Sorry for the long author's note and on with the story!
Draco sat slumped in his high-backed armchair. Elbow on the armrest and chin in his hand, he stared into the flickering flames in the fireplace in front of him, lost in thought.
Over the years, he'd grown accustomed to wearing a mask of indifference around most people, the exceptions being his mother and very occasionally his friends. He kept his expression unreadable and his emotions in check – mostly. On a few occasions he had been pushed to the precipice of what he assumed was his breaking point, but he always removed himself from the situation before anything regrettable ever happened. This was what he had done almost a week before in that café – ran away before the bubbling emotions that lay beneath the surface seeped through and stained the stoic surface. This mask kept him in check – kept him stable.
However, when he was alone there was nobody to present it to, and so it dissolved and left confusion and inner turmoil in its wake. When he was alone, he thought and thought until he felt sure there were no more thoughts to be had.
He often thought of his father, though he would sooner hex himself repeatedly in the eyeball than tell anybody.
After the war, Draco and Narcissa had avoided imprisonment due to the testimony of Harry 'saviour of the wizarding world' Potter, and his own father's insistence that he had forced his wife and son to participate. When Lucius had proclaimed this in front of judge and jury, Draco remembered that his mother had tried to deny it to help her husband, but he had managed to hold her back from doing anything that may jeopardise her own health and security. His father was sentenced to life in Azkaban that same day.
The trail had taken place on June 1st 1998, nearly a month after the end of the war and four days before Draco's 19th birthday. Almost like a sick, twisted birthday present, he thought to himself.
Once locked away behind bars, Lucius' already poor health (due to his first stint in Azkaban and the stress of having the Dark Lord breathing down his neck for years) began deteriorating rapidly. He was allowed home on 'compassionate release' in the last few days of his life, still accompanied by a rotating series of Aurors who sat imposingly by the door, watching the dying man at all times.
Draco remembered distinctly that he hadn't known how to feel. He didn't know whether to be pleased that at least his father wouldn't die cold and alone, or livid towards the man who had essentially signed himself up for a living hell and dragged his family down with him. The inner conflict had raged within him for three days, until on the morning of November 23rd 1999, his father died.
When he had stood next to his father's bed, watching his mother sob into the sheets as she held her dead husband's hand, he had felt a crack tear its way right through the middle of his icy mask of indifference. He had then retreated to his room for the night, plastering over the chink in his armour.
His mother had cried for two days afterwards, and then flung herself into paperwork and funeral planning to distract herself. Draco on the other hand, didn't shed a tear.
The next six months were a blur in his memory. He had been there for his mother as best he could, and helped her through the worst of her grief – mainly by allowing her to cry onto his shoulder. Mostly though, she had held herself together and gotten on with attempting to repair the damage the Malfoy patriarch had done to the family's reputation.
One event from that time that did stick out in his mind though, was when he had expressed his surprise to his mother regarding the way in which she handled the death. He had expected, he told her, that she would completely break down, for he had seen the level of dedication and sometimes dependency that she had shown towards his father.
Narcissa had smiled sadly, and said quietly that she had lost the man she married years before he had died. Confused, Draco had asked what she meant. She had replied that she had already grieved the loss of her husband a long time ago, when she realised that the person who came out the other side of involvement with the Dark Lord would not be the same Lucius Malfoy she had originally known. The man they watched die, she said, was merely a shell of the man who was.
By May of 2000, Draco was finding that it was becoming increasingly difficult to hide his emotions away. They had been festering and fermenting beneath the surface, and being cooped up in his childhood home which was full of a multitude of painful memories wasn't helping them to disperse. So he decided a change of scenery was what he needed.
He contacted the ministry, asking if they would allow him to join their team that would be investigating Muggle-magical scientific possibilities, which he had read about in the Daily Prophet. Harsh words were exchanged, and accusations of persisting Death Eater sympathy were hurled at him constantly, but Draco managed to pass the tests needed and he agreed to all of their terms. He had reasoned with them, saying that surely he was less of a 'threat to public safety' if he was far away from the public they were trying to protect.
A week after the initial enquiry, he said goodbye to his mother and left for America.
The feeling of freedom and relief he experienced being so far away from Britain was immense, and it could not even be dampened by the official that was 'overseeing' Draco's work and leisure, as per the Ministry's request.
A year later, he was back in his childhood home and feeling almost as irritated as before he had left.
Stupid Granger.
Still staring into the fire, lost in thought, he didn't hear his mother quietly entering the room.
"Draco?" she asked softly, yet loud enough that he heard and nearly jumped out of his seat in surprise.
"Sorry," she said, "I didn't mean to scare you like that. I was just wondering where you had gone. I sent Misty to fetch you for dinner, but she said you told her you wanted to be left alone."
He vaguely remembered hearing the house-elf apparate into his room and 'request his presence in the dining room', but he didn't recall answering her. His mind had been preoccupied, he supposed.
"I was just… I don't know," he sighed, "thinking… I guess."
His mother conjured up a chair similar to his own with ease, and sat down near to the fire so that she could see him properly.
"Thinking about what?" she enquired, and then after a second or two she asked, "about the Granger girl?"
He wasn't going to admit to ruminating about his father, and technically he had just started to think about the whole Granger situation, so he ran with it.
"Yeah, a little," he said tentatively, "it only makes sense that something this fucked up would happen to me of all people," he finished bitterly.
Narcissa sighed and leaned back in her armchair, her hands clasped on her lap. She looked at her son so intensely that he began to feel uncomfortable, and so he stared off into the fire again to avoid her gaze.
"Do you dislike the idea because of her blood?" she asked after what felt like hours.
Draco thought for a second. He decided that no, that wasn't the reason.
His faith in pureblood supremacy, as taught to him by his father, had first started to waver in his early school years. Potter's initial rejection had left his pride wounded – he'd been brought up to think that everyone who was anyone would want to know him due to his family name, but a certain scarhead had completely turned him down… and in favour of weasel of all people. The thought still made Draco cringe slightly.
Then as he progressed through school, Hermione bloody Granger besting him in every subject made him realise that the supposed facts about how Muggles and Muggleborns were inferior in every way simply didn't add up quite as well as he'd expected.
Flash forward to sixth year, and with the Dark Lord residing in his home and his father a pathetic shell of the person he once was, Draco was well and truly questioning his whole belief system. Of course, he hadn't done much about his doubts, as he had to act fast to try and keep his family safe.
During the final battle, he had seen a Death Eater lying dead next to a Muggleborn fourth year girl. As blood had gushed from both of them, mingling and mixing on the cold stone floor of the courtyard, Draco had seen no difference in colour – no dirty and clean, no pure and impure. It was just blood.
The icing on the cake of his doubts had come in the form of his year in America. There, he had been able to see just how much muggles had been able to accomplish without magic. Their lack of it had not hindered them or rendered them incapable or incompetent – they could actually do things themselves that Draco could never even dream of being able to do.
So no, he didn't dislike the idea of Hermione Granger because of blood. He refused to make his father's mistakes.
"No," he answered finally, "that's not why."
"Then why?" she asked.
He sighed.
"It's just – it's Granger."
Narcissa just smiled slyly at his petulant answer. Maybe, she thought, some intervention was what was needed.